St Margaret's Farmhouse

St. Margaret's Farmhouse is a timber-frame building, likely dating to the 17th century or earlier, and renovated in the 19th and 20th centuries. The main range was originally timber-framed and later cased in red brick in a stretcher bond around 1940. A rear wing and a north porch were added in 1882 as part of renovations for Lord Brownlow’s Ashridge Estate, as indicated by a stone plaque on the porch bearing his coronet and cipher. The house is in a roughly T-shape, facing north, and is two stories high. The north front has a small gabled porch near the center, and two-light casement windows with segmental two-ring arches. A pentice (a projecting roofed shelter) runs along the west side of the rear wing, and an entrance passage is situated at the junction with the north part of the house. On the south wall of the west room on the ground floor, portions of the original timber frame are visible where plaster has been damaged, revealing the post and rail construction. An early 18th-century two-panel door with ovolo and fillet mouldings is present. The kitchen in the south wing has a stone floor.